WASHINGTON: Firing back in a mounting clash with the Bush administration, World Bank President James Wolfen-sohn on Wednesday issued an impassioned plea for increased aid to poor nations.

Without mentioning names, Wolfensohn brushed aside criticism by Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill that aid has produced paltry results. He made it clear that he isn’t backing down in his effort to convince rich countries that winning an enduring victory over terrorism will require them to contribute significantly more money toward alleviating poverty.

“We will not create a safer world with bombs or brigades alone,” Wolfensohn said in a speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center. While poverty does not itself lead to violence, it can provide a breeding ground for the ideas and actions of those who promote conflict and terror, he said.

Wolfensohn’s speech came two weeks before President Bush and other world leaders are scheduled to meet in Monterrey, Mexico, for a UN conference on financing for development. There the battle over the aid issue will be joined.

Wolfensohn’s allies include Gordon Brown, the British chancellor of the exchequer, who has called for a “Marshall Plan” for the developing world that would double aid to about $100 billion a year. His chief foe is O’Neill, who argues that aid hasn’t been effective enough to justify such a major increase, especially considering the persistence of wretched conditions in many countries that have received substantial sums from foreign donors.

The US has already blocked an effort by Britain and other nations to insert specific targets for increased aid into the Monterrey conference communique. But Wolfensohn referred to Monterrey as “our opportunity to take the next important step,” and he said that while budgetary realities may make it impossible to double aid overnight, rich countries ought to endorse a phased-in increase- say, an additional $10bn a year for the next 5 years, building to an extra $50bn in year five. The extra $50 billion would cost “only an extra one-fifth of 1 percent of the income of rich countries,” Wolfensohn said, and it is within the range of what the World Bank estimates is needed to meet UN goals of halving world poverty by the year 2015. —Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) The Washington Post